Posted
by
timothy
on Tuesday May 31, 2011 @07:41PM
from the because-the-xoom-hates-the-light dept.

Compared to their dumber e-ink cousins, tablets with LCD screens suffer at least two notable disadvantages: their batteries last hours or days, rather than weeks (or months), and they're notoriously hard to read in the sunshine. Neither of these problems are likely to be licked soon, but the gap may be shrinking: Mary Lou Jepsen's OLPC spinoff Pixel Qi has now shown off a 10", 1280x800 panel. Pixel Qi's screens are well-known, though not currently widely adopted, for their ability to run in a high-contrast, low-power greyscale mode as well as a still-frugal color mode. Though the company is currently showing prototypes rather than a shipping version of the new high-resolution screens, it's reason to renew hope for a long-lived color-screen tablet that's comfortable in the sunlight.

Don't worry, once they go under, one of those first tier companies will buy the patent at auction and start churning out all sorts of things. And you'll finally get one and then you'll think "this is so amazing, where were you all my life" and the answer will be "right there beside you, growing ever more bitter as you threw yourself into abusive relationship after abusive relationship and came back to cry on my shoulder afterwards" and it will throw itself into your bathtub and electrocute you.